


A Lack of Color

by whetstone



Category: Big Bang (Band)
Genre: M/M, Second person POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-08 23:16:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/767229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetstone/pseuds/whetstone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seungri just tries, really hard. Maybe that's why Jiyong likes him so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lack of Color

in this world  
love has no color—  
yet how deeply  
my body  
is stained by yours  
— izumi shikibu

 

Jiyong is blonde black red orange gold green, on his head or his shoulders or the slim lines of his hips, on his feet or in his head or his heart. He's always moving, always going from one place to another. He's the first to come to the studios and the last to leave at the parties, the one who flaps his arms at dance practice and says, "just one more time," even though the circles under his eyes are darker than yours, even though all of you have the steps shooting up your legs in cramps.

You, you've got no color. You know you're nothing special -- you just _try,_ really hard. Maybe that's why Jiyong likes you so much, why when you were sixteen and seventeen and eighteen you found him staring at you sometimes, a smile flickering along his face before he muted it again, too lost in telling you what you've done wrong to acknowledge all of the ways in which you two are right.

Sometimes he pretends to kiss you, mouth-to-mouth or his lips against your cheek, his arms twisting yours around your back and his knees shoved up against your shins, the shiny colored mop of his hair bleeding into your own dull black (after your debut, you are almost always black). He'd bash his forehead into your skull for the cameras. It's always for cameras, because when it's just the two of you he puts his hand along your elbow or slides it along the nape of your neck, like you're some kind of skittish animal, like he's afraid every word he's ever said will come back to bite him in the ass and you'll shove him away. But you stay, and you let him touch, and you touch him back. In the winter, once, the heater had broken in the dorms. Jiyong's breath was ghost-white on your skin.

When Jiyong was younger his fingernails were painted black and every time he singled you out at practice, every time he waved you over to do the dishes or sweep the floor or do the laundry you could feel it, dark pricks at the edge of your vision, a simmering anger you weren't allowed to express. Youngbae looked guilty and Seunghyun mostly amused, Daesung more often than not under the crook of his arm. He'd spring up to help you before you even asked. It made you resentful, and that made him confused, and before you knew it the gulf between you was as large as a canyon, rust reds and grey dust crowding Daesung's vision until he believed in the hype. Until he stayed on his side of the bed and stopped answering when you asked if he was awake.

Now Jiyong is older, but in the apartment the hum of the fan and the quiet bubble of the rice cooker still move in tune to his breaths. He still knows how to press your buttons, 30-line sentences slithering along your spine like that text message he sent to you, that one time. The post-performance adrenaline had spiked and dropped, and he didn't answer when you called him back. When you won your first award you set it on the coffee table of the apartment you both shared. When the second and the third followed, Jiyong had broken one. On accident, he said. While dusting, he said. When you raised your voice he told you to go to your room, like you were still some little kid, like you still didn't know anything, and it infuriated you to feel the smirk on his face when you kissed him, your teeth drawing blood on his lip, his cheekbones digging into yours, his fingers shoving hard at your hips.

And now you are just a little older, and a lot wiser, and if you try hard enough you can ignore it when Jiyong calls out to you, although you don't do that much. You learn that if you correct his Japanese his eyes crease up and he laughs and says he'll get you later (he rarely ever does). You learn that maybe his jacket with the back all cut up doesn't look very good on you, and that black hair always does, that if you go too long hanging out with Chansung and Hara and Jonghyun he'll start to call you, one or two rings before he picks up his pride and hangs up, that in Tokyo if you go to one of his parties he shows you off like a prize puppy. That drunk, Jiyong is a sloppy kisser. You hang around the studios when you don't have to record, cracking bad jokes and singing bad lines until Daesung has to laugh, until his side relaxes against yours as you sit thigh-to-thigh on the big leather couch, until Youngbae tackles you back against it for tv and his eyes curve up for real, crinkling at the corners. Seunghyun hits you and you hit him back, with words or the light slap of a fist. It's warm, and it's comfortable, and if it were a color it'd be the kind of red you see on the backs of your eyelids when the sun shines.

And Jiyong -- Jiyong is still Jiyong. He walks in one day wearing a fluorescent striped suit jacket and you put your sunglasses on, and when the salon cuts your bangs a little too short he bows at ninety degrees and calls you Seungri-ahjusshi. The night before you go back to Tokyo he comes in and sits on the corner of your bed with his Japanese textbook, shy and resentful about it, refusing to look at you as you change his verbs and tenses around, the bright blue of your pen running circles around his gray charcoal pencil. "You didn't make that many mistakes," you say, and he beams.

When you get there Jiyong stumbles over his first interview without a translator, and he looks down at his notes as he speaks. When he catches your eye you give him an exaggerated thumbs-up and a smile so ridiculously wide he has to cover his face with the index card. "What is Seungri in Big Bang?" the reporter asks, and Jiyong's eyes spark a little, and you prepare to be called the family pet, or the uncle, or the neighbor, but he clears his throat. "Seungri," he says, "is like our reflector. He has all of our colors."


End file.
